Tuesday is the Feast of the Epiphany, so this
homily will anticipate that event. Most of this morning’s hymns were written to
celebrate it: so let’s seize the opportunity to learn what those Wise Men can
teach us about how set about ‘looking for God’ – and what to expect if we
actually find Him!

Many people today say they are ‘searching for
God’; but because they fail to find Him immediately, they give up the search.
Some preachers say they ought to have been asking Godto find them, and not vice versa. ButScripture, encourages
such a search – though Isaiah had warned his hearers that God is Someone who ‘truly
hides Himself’; and went on to say that God
might be found by those who
did not seek [Him], and might reveal Himself to those who did not
ask for Him; and, as Jesus Himself said, ‘Seek and
you will find’. So man’s problem today isn’t because he’s
searching, but is both looking in the wrong direction, and giving
up too easily.

The Wise Men set out to find the King of
the Jews; they ended up by finding God Himself – the Word-made-Flesh.
That’s the first lesson we can learn from them: don’t be surprised to
find, when you enter God’s Presence, that He isn’t quite as you supposed Him to
be. So if it’s God you are looking for, be prepared for surprises!

But we are jumping ahead. Their ‘surprises’ came
much later on. Being Wise Men they would have spent a lot of time
studying books and prophecies, before they set out, , including perhaps the
Jewish Scriptures (which we call the Old Testament), and what they would have
called ‘Science’ (or ‘Knowledge’) including the movement of stars and planets,
before they realized that God was trying to tell them something.

Being Wise Men they immediately compared their
experience with that of other Wise Men. Wisdom (and experience,
and the Bible) agree that when God chooses to reveal His Plans to a Wise Man, He
often includes two or three other Wise Men besides, So if you feel that
God is asking you to do something for Him, it’s wise to share it
with someone who takes God as seriously as you do – and often our ‘sharer’ will
reply, “That’s strange! I had just that same thought the other day”.
When two or three of God’s agents simultaneously come up with the same idea then
it’s probably come from God rather than their own imaginations; or else
each different idea fits in with the others, like pieces of a jig-saw to form
the complete picture of what God is calling them to do.

So the Wise Men set out together to look for the
‘new King of the Jews’. Being Wise Men, each one of them listened carefully to
what the others had to say because they were wise enough to know that they
didn’t know everything. So when their guiding Star temporarily
disappeared as they approached Jerusalem, they were Wise enough to ask the help
of the local ruler (who happened to be the worldly-wise King Herod the Great).

Being well-read, they knew of King Herod’s was a
cruel, unscrupulous, secular-minded, untruthful tyrant; but they were Wise
enough to know that even secular Worldly Wisdom can have a vital part to play in
discovering God’s purposes. Would that our Church Leaders today were just a
little bit wiser than they are! But those Wise Men were also wise enough to know
that when somebody like Herod stated that he himself intended to worship the
King in due course, it needed to be ‘taken with a large spoonful of salt’ and
if necessary, totally disregarded.

Those Wise Men set out to find an earthly
king. Very wisely they took gifts with them to show their respect for
him. That’s the sort of thing earthly kings are always finding themselves doing!
But sometime during their journey they began to realise that it wasn’t their
gifts that God was looking for, but their worship.

So, they found the Person they were looking for:
but, much to their surprise, the Person they found was no mere earthly King
– He was (and is) God-made-Flesh, in His Mother’s arms! – and having found, and
seen, God Incarnate they wisely did what God had intended them to do from the
word Go: they ‘fell down and worshipped Him’. It was only after
worshipping Him that they opened the gifts they had brought to give Him.

That’s the most important lesson the Epiphany
has to teach us. It’s not primarily our gifts that God is looking for,
though our gifts and talents certainly have a place in His Plan. God is looking
to us to give up our very selves,to His Service, after the
example of His Son who for us men and for our salvation gave up Himself into the
hands of His heavenly Father. As St Paul so memorably wrote, “I beseech you
brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies, a living sacrifice,
wholly acceptable unto God: which is your reasonable service”.